Hello world!!

Here is Jason and I before the TV ad shoot, the lovely Mrs B and I, and myself and some of the beautiful ladies at our lunch! I have more pics and will post another time.

Wow, trying to find time to blog is becoming very difficult. But, I need to because I haven't told my Queensland Story yet! I had a ball! Got to love these 'working holidays'! Good business sense having a staff member in such a nice part of the world :) Thanks to Di and Gerard, they put me up for 6 days in their beautiful home. I hooked into Di's wireless network and spent a fair bit of time on the 'puter. I trained with Gerard on the Thursday, while Di was at work. That was my only training session with Di/Gerard! But, Di and I did lots of cardio - well, to me it was lots. My sessions are usually quite short, at 20-40 mins, but we went for an hour most times. One day we even did 2 x an hour. Walked these whopping great hills - my poor shins and tops of feet were so sore for about 3 days! We did one hill on the way back that was like freaking Mt Everest - Di just took off and left me for dead. At one point I even had to stop and have a rest for about 10 seconds. But seriously, I would LOVE to have that environment every day to do my cardio. It's so pretty, and interesting - with hills, stairs, the boardwalk, the beach - they have it all. And it was great to do cardio with someone - alone is so boring. I'm happy to say that at least for 3 weeks of my comp prep I will have all this available to me!! Now THAT I am looking forward to.

The lunch Di put on for everyone was awesome! I loved meeting Gillian, Kellie and Maraina. Gillian gave me a lovely card and a beautiful necklace - she has great taste :) Gill, I wore it last night. We had chicken kebabs and marinated chicken, some awesome cheese that Hils bought, lovely bread thanks to Gill, and a great pasta salad courtesy of Kellie. I'm sure there were other things bought by other people too...just lots of nice food all round! Great to catch up with Lorraine and Rachel again and meet little baby Zach! Rach is looking great and will be looking even better in a few months, 'eh Rach? Poor old Gerard. I felt so sorry for him! None of us slept too well on the Friday night, and I was getting a bite to eat about 2am and could hear Gerard coughing (and spewing) his guts up. He was one crook boy the next day.

We went for breakfast Sunday morning down at Raw Energy. I love how it's so casual up there - everyone walks around in bikini tops. There's no way that would happen here!

Di and I got to spend some quality time together, going through some Ideal Bodies Online stuff. The one on one training is oh so much more productive!

Had a posing lesson with Jo on the way up from Brissy to Coolum - that was good - hard work, and it felt so weird with just small alterations. I was so sore from my workouts and having to flex and hold poses just killed me! I was very sore again next day!!

I left on Monday at noon - didn't arrive home until 8.15pm but at least all flights were on time. And I had my brilliant new wireless connection with me so could check email from anywhere. This is going to be SO handy to have.

So, on the home front:

I still haven't fully unpacked my case - but that's no surprise to me. I have had 2 HUGE weeks for new clients. It took me half a day to print out documents and sort out files when I got home.

I trained Shoulders and Back on Tuesday, man it felt good - I'd given shoulders a rest for a week and I came back feeling very strong. I am sore, which is a nice feeling in the shoulders and back. I trained legs yesterday - very short workout at 35 mins but that was enough! I PB'd on 2 sets of stiff leg deadlifts - I did 12 reps at 55kg, and 6 reps at 60kg. You see, I had 2.5kg more than I realised on the bar each time. Got to love that when you count it up and realise you'd done a PB without even trying :) Anyway, OUCH. I was getting sore almost immediately. Could barely straighten my legs getting out of bed today. Booked in for a massage at 3pm today :) I also squatted 65kg for 6 good reps, no spot. Pretty happy with that. I can't do much more than 12 sets total when I am lifting to maximum. Still, all you need to do is provide your muscles a stimulus to grow, and lifting heavier than previous or PB's will do just that. No need to totally trash myself. I am going to keep my workouts short until i start my prep. Am also cutting cardio back to 3 per week. One reason is that I need the time for work - I know when i am prepping I will not have a lot of time, so using it while I can. Plus giving the body a bit of a rest before it all starts in earnest.

Ok, well I'm sure I have heaps more to tell but it is time to do some more work.